Advice on selling my Mac Mini

Hi everyone, been a long time since I've been in the Mini forum. I recently sold my 13" rMBP and picked up a new 15" rMBP to replace it and my late 2012 Mac Mini. Selling the 13" rMBP was easy, I looked on Ebay and saw what they were going for and I put in on Craigslist and it was gone in less than 24 hours.

Now it's time to sell the Mini, and this has me a little confused on where the market is at on this thing. I have a late 2012 Mini with the 2.3 quad core i7 and originally it had 4GB ram and the 1TB HD. Since then I've upgraded it to 16GB ram and a 256GB SSD. If you price a new Mini with the 2.3/4/1TB option form Apple you are at $799, but if you option it out to the way mine is setup with 16GB ram and a 256GB SSD you are at a whopping $1,299! That's a huge difference in price.

I know that "most" people buy the base model and upgrade it the way I did for fairly cheap so it wouldn't be wise to ask too much for the upgrades I've done to it. So my main question is, would I be better off putting the original 4GB ram and 1TB HD back in it and sell it as a base model 2.3/4GB/1TB or should I leave my upgrades in it and ask a couple hundred more?

Looking on Ebay the prices are all over the place for these things. And of course yes I know this all depends on what happens at WWDC tomorrow if they announce a new Mini or now.

Personally, I would leave the upgrades in (maybe keep the ssd). I know how well Apple products hold their value but with WWDC tomorrow at the moment it would be hard to say a fair price. If you price high you run into what you said about people buying a refurb from Apple and doing the upgrades themselves.

I would set a price around $950 for the time being but if Apple announces an upgrade tomorrow, that price is going to have to drop

Keep the upgrades in. Unless you have another computer to put them in, they would just sit around collecting dust or you'd have to go through the hassle of selling them separately.

I would add up what you've put into it and maybe ask 80% of that total. Apple sells the refurbs for around 85% of their original price for current machines, which is what you have as of today. So an $800 mini, $150 RAM and a $200 SSD, so around $920? You might have to go lower if you want to move the thing fast depending on where you live.

I had the exact same setup as you, albeit refurbished and a smaller 128GB SSD. I sold it back in February for $680. Granted I sold it here to avoid eBay, but still you have to find someone that knows enough about Macs to want to be able to deal with warranty issues and removing the SSD if something were to happen. Most people don't want to have to rip open a Mac Mini and risk breaking something to remove the SSD just to get warranty work done (if there is any). So while there are some people here that are comfortable and don't care, the mass market for these would rather not deal with it. Also, your $200 SSD is really worth about $100 or less today used, you can routinely find SanDisk and Samsung SSDs on Newegg for less than $120.

if Apple announces an upgrade tomorrow, that price is going to have to drop

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Or Rise!
If Apple comes with an even minier mini (ATV size) with fixed RAM and choose your own PCI-SSD at buy, then the 2011-2012's will be holding their value for many more years. We might even see an old stock rush.

Well looks like no new Mini announced today so I will stick to trying to sell it for the current price. Thanks for the tips everyone.

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Bought and sold 2 times (2010 & 12) Just go to Amazon & ebay and check the prices. The market for these is always strong. Once every few weeks someone will blow out a group from a business at a great price & people watch for those.

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